crypto

Sage D. Young2h

Meme coins have lost all their 2026 gains and continue to dive

Despite having an early lead in year-to-date gains, meme coins have round-tripped and bled even more.

For example, frog-based token pepe was up 75% in the first four days of January, but is now about 8% lower than where it started the year. Dogecoin, shiba inu, bonk, pengu, dogwifhat, and trump tell a similar story: posting a positive gain and then slumping into the red.

Screenshot 2026-02-09 at 11.32.10 AM.png — The year-to-date price performances of the top meme coins by market capitalization (TradingView)

Meme coins, cryptocurrencies based on internet jokes that are often critiqued for lacking utility, are reflexive: they can lead gains during bullish market conditions, but see sharper declines in bearish ones. The entire category of meme coins has shed 25.8% of its valuation in the year so far, data from blockchain analytics firm Artemis shows.

The price action of meme coins comes amid a broader market decline that saw bitcoin drop to $63,000 last week as its peers revisited cycle lows.

“The market has, in large, been bleeding, whether major, altcoin, or meme,” according to Nicolai Søndergaard, research analyst at on-chain data firm Nansen. “It is not surprising to me to see that larger memes as well have been trending down.”

He told Sherwood News, “If we also consider the fact that there are less active wallets now compared to a few months ago, it also makes sense that larger ‘household’ memes would decline as money shifts around to the next shiny thing.”

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Yaël Bizouati-Kennedy

Bernstein analyst says “bitcoin bear case is the weakest in its history,” maintains $150,000 price target

Another analyst noted that at a price level of $70,000, 9.3 million bitcoin are now underwater, the highest level since January 2023.

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crypto

Sage D. Young2/6/26

XRP bouncing back faster than its peers after crypto market downturn

XRP is seeing the strongest relief bounce on Friday among its peers following the broad market downturn in crypto.

XRP hit its lowest mark since 2024 on Thursday, but the price of the cryptocurrency has increased roughly 20% in the last 24 hours, outpacing bitcoin and ethereum, which have seen 6.5% and 5.2% gains, respectively. Dogecoin has climbed 8% and solana is up 5% in the same period, data from CoinGecko shows.

XRP’s “price tends to amplify market movements,” Kaiko research analyst Thomas Probst told Sherwood News. “Markets are experiencing a phase of liquidity contraction with increasing volatility. Therefore, rebounds can be frequent, even if they are rarely sustained over the long term.”

The relief comes amid increased activity on the XRP Ledger. Crypto analytics firm Santiment flagged that, during the dip, XRP Ledger saw a four-month high of “whale transactions” over $100,000 and a six-month high of unique addresses on the network in one eight-hour candle. “These are both major signals of a price reversal for any asset,” the firm said.

Ripple, the company closely tied to XRP and its largest holder, said in a Thursday blog post that XRP is “at the heart of every institutional use case,” such as stablecoin payments, tokenized collateral, and lending markets.

In an updated road map for the XRP Ledger, the firm outlined upcoming features that act as a “building block for composable financial ecosystems.” These features include a lending protocol, confidential transfers using zero-knowledge proofs, and a new layer of programmability to escrow primitives.

Meanwhile, spot XRP ETFs absorbed $5.9 million worth of inflows on Thursday, helping the week remain in the black at nearly $24 million.

Yaël Bizouati-Kennedy

Bitcoin rebounds after dreadful day that saw $1.26 billion in liquidations

CoinMarketCap’s Crypto Fear and Greed Index is at an all-time low of 5, representing “extreme fear.”

Bitcoin Continues Months-Long Steep Decline In Value

Yaël Bizouati-Kennedy

Strategy misses Q4 earnings expectations

The largest corporate bitcoin holder reported results amid a widespread crypto crash.

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crypto

Sage D. Young2/5/26

Altcoins from solana to dogecoin sink to levels not seen in years

As bitcoin continues to set new cycle lows, altcoins are revisiting levels not seen in several years. Over the past 24 hours:

XRP has dropped nearly 19% to trade at $1.24, its lowest mark since November 2024;
Solana is down 7% to trade under $84, returning to a price point last recorded in January 2024;
Dogecoin has slid 10% to $0.09, a price last seen in September 2024;
chainlink is down below $8.40, erasing all gains made since October 2023.

It’s hitting the crypto ecosystem hard: 305,791 traders have been liquidated in the past 24 hours, with total liquidations standing at $1.46 billion, CoinGlass data shows. The market capitalization of the entire crypto space is now at $2.35 trillion, a drawdown of 7.5% in the last 24 hours and a stunning 46.6% plunge from the all-time high of $4.4 trillion set in October 2025.

The altcoin market is correlated with bitcoin, with both undergoing a steep decline, according to Devin Ryan, director of financial technology research at investment bank Citizens Capital Markets & Advisory.

As to what is driving the downswing, Ryan pointed to the October sell-off that triggered the massive initial wave of liquidations as well as a number of macro headwinds, such as ongoing geopolitical conflicts, concerns of another government shutdown, and uncertainty surrounding a new Fed chair.

There’s volatility in the asset class because of market structure issues and concerns around where bitcoin goes from here from a price perspective, Ryan said.

Ryan expects the correlation between bitcoin and the rest of the crypto ecosystem to break down over the next year to two years.

The recent volatility highlights that cryptocurrency’s blockchain technology is still in an early phase, Ryan said. “We are still in the early days of even getting the clarity around regulation and the legislation that’s needed to progress from this world of pilot phase — what might happen on the blockchain to here’s what’s happening on the blockchain and on which blockchains,” Ryan told Sherwood News.

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